The General, Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress, wants government to take a second look at the local content policy for the oil and gas sector, to ensure that Ghanaians are protected from layoffs when production companies face operational challenges.
This follows Tullow Oil Ghana’s decision to reduce its workforce by at least 25 percent due to Tullow Oil Plc’s massive disappointments in operations in Africa and South America.
Deputy General Secretary of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union, Francis Sallah, told Citi Business News policy makers must offer Ghanaian workers some relief in such circumstances.
“It bores down to the adequate implementation of the government policy that is lacking, because from where I sit now, I don’t think that we have the caliber of people in charge of key operations in the oil and gas sector. No multinational company should work elsewhere and their negative effects be pushed unto us Ghanaians. So in reality it is the implementation of our policies. That is the problem” he said.
He added that “We have the fine laws, but, how do we make sure it works? They will not be able to push it back to us if we have the right people in place and are in charge of certain operations. I think the local content policy has to be taken a second look at for it to work properly”.
Citi Business News has learnt that the ongoing global redundancy process will lead to the departure of 35 percent of Tullow Ghana’s senior leadership, and overall 25 percent job losses for staff made up of both Ghanaians and expatriates.
The redundancy programme will be done in three batches with the first group of workers set to exit the company by March, the second batch to depart by June, and the last in December 2020.
